Marin, Bay Area traffic among worst in the nation, economy may be partly to blame

Marin and the rest of the Bay Area have the second worst commute in the entire country, according to a new report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute issued Tuesday.

The report ranks Oakland-San Francisco — and surrounding areas — as the second most congested in the nation based on hours commuters were delayed in traffic — 61 per year, matching the delay drivers in Los Angeles face each year.

The Washington, D.C., area is the worst in the nation at 67 hours of delay per driver, and New York is third at 59. The numbers are based on data from 2011.

"The Bay Area economy is coming back very strong and you can see it in the traffic and congestion," said Dianne Steinhauser, executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin. "When we opened the carpool lanes on Highway 101 in April 2009 there was a period when we did not have congestion northbound and southbound."

Now Steinhauser reports southbound morning traffic backs up beginning near Miller Creek Road in Marinwood and northbound in the afternoon in Strawberry.

"Our sales tax revenue is up 8 percent since last year," she said. "People are working and shopping and that equates to traffic."

The busiest section of Highway 101 in Marin is at the San Pedro Road Interchange in San Rafael. In 2009, Caltrans counted 180,000 cars daily in that stretch. In 2010 the number jumped to 187,000 and in 2011 it was 188,000, according to agency figures.

"That increase is not insignificant," said John Goodwin, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation agency.

A full-width freeway lane typically has a capacity of 2,000 cars per hour, so additional cars during a busy commute period can cause delays, he noted.

"The Bay Area consistently ranks in the top 5," Goodwin said. "We have 7 million-plus people and 3 million jobs. I wouldn't expect us to fall out of the Top 5. You can't defeat congestion, but you can manage it."

To help ease traffic over the past three decades, Bay Area governmental leaders and voters have approved more than 500 miles of new highway lanes in the region, allowed solo drivers on two freeways to use carpool lanes for a toll, installed hundreds of metering lights and extended BART to the San Francisco Airport, with work ongoing to extend BART to the South Bay.

The report also found on average, Americans allowed for an hour of driving time for a trip that would take 20 minutes without traffic. The total nationwide added up to 5.5 billion additional hours that Americans spent in their cars during 2011.

The institute, part of Texas A&M University, uses 30 years of traffic data, and its annual reports are one of the key tools used by experts to solve traffic problems. Researchers study how commuters adapt their travel plans when they have urgent appointments in highly congested areas based on data gathered from state transportation agencies, private companies and academic entities that monitor traffic issues.

When all costs are totaled, the cost of traffic congestion to Americans was up $1 billion over 2010 for a total of $121 billion. For commercial truck drivers alone, wasted time and diesel fuel amounted to $27 billion.

New to the report this year is the amount of additional carbon dioxide that gets released into the atmosphere because of clogged roads. In 2011, that total was 56 billion pounds of additional carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of 380 pounds per commuter.

The statistic "points to the importance of implementing transportation improvements to reduce congestion," researcher and co-author David Schrank said.

The study also determined that Americans burned 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline while sitting in congestion, a slight improvement over the peak in 2005 when commuters wasted 3.2 billion gallons.